


Camping Out Between the Stars

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Community: sentinel_thurs, Crack, M/M, Multi, Other, Sentinel Thursday, Tentacle Sex but not explicit, Weddings, a little angst maybe but not too much I hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2020-03-09 20:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: Jim takes Blair camping. Thingsreallydon't go as Jim planned.There are some warnings in the end notes, but hopefully nothing would be triggery for anyone.





	Camping Out Between the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> written for Sentinel Thursday challenge 384 - wedding

Jim looked at the tux and sighed. The jacket did look better after this — the fourth, was it? — attempt at alteration, but the pants… "Sorry, Charlie," he said and shook his head. "Keep subtracting."

Blair elbowed him in the ribs and hissed, "You should at least try them on. You're hurting his feelings." Which might have been true; Charlie did seem a little crestfallen as he gathered up the rejected clothing and left, but Jim's sympathy could only stretch so far, and right now he was in need of all of it for himself.

Best man at Blair Sandburg's wedding.

On a spaceship.

To an alien.

Jim sighed again. It just couldn't get much better than this.

~~~~~~~~~

It was Sandburg's fault, of course: _The Sentinel_ , by Blair Sandburg, splashing itself all over the airwaves for that brief but fatal couple of days. Jim had figured he was on the verge of finding himself disappeared into a Company lab, or more likely one of the agencies nobody even knew the name of. Or hell, the MIB.

He'd just never considered that the people who finally ended up disappearing him would turn out to not be people at all.

At this point in Jim's somewhat repetitive train of thought, if he was voicing it aloud — which he usually was, when Blair was around — Blair would frown and say, "Jim, the Xcsasth*ng are people. Not human people, okay, but still _people_. Just because they don't look like us doesn't mean they don't have a sophisticated culture. And not just technologically speaking; their empathy levels are —"

"Out of this world, I know." Jim had gotten tired of Blair's Xcsasth*ng fervor pretty damn fast. "Not that we're in — on — _any_ world at the moment."

"They'll take us home whenever we want, remember? They just want to do a few more tests on your senses — and don't even try to bitch about that; you already admitted you like their tests a lot better than you ever liked mine. They finish the tests, we say the word, and whoosh, we're back toasting marshmallows over our campfire and watching the moon rise over Grizzly Lake. Everything's cool. Chill, all right?"

Generally Blair would abandon their conversation after this and wander off to go native with their abductors again. Jim would glare at his back as he walked away, then grumpily take himself off to the ship's gym. Blair was partly right, unfortunately. The Xcsasth— hell, the "Things" — had some kind of testing setup that didn't bug Jim at all, unlike Sandburg's excruciatingly boring, or sometimes just excruciating, methods of research: Jim answered a few low-key, oddball questions, the Thing who was asking the questions looked at him thoughtfully, or at least that's what his expression looked like to Jim, and then the two of them would go play some hoops or have a beer or two.

Truthfully, the Things weren't so bad. Yeah, Jim had had to set some stringent ground rules in order for their basketball games to have a shot at being fair, but the Things had been willing enough to accommodate him. That was one of the best… _things_ about them — they were willing. They'd adapted some of their gym equipment for him to use; had stocked up pretty comprehensively on beer, decent beer, before they'd left U.S. airspace behind; and they didn't mind the nicknames Jim called them by — Rsfgtfatxch*rly even seemed to prefer "Charlie" to his real name.

If only Charlie could get the right number of legs on Jim's tuxedo pants.

~~~~~~~~

"Table leg," Jim had said, with feeling, the morning Blair bounced back to their cabin with the biggest "I just got laid" high school locker room-level grin on his face Jim had ever seen. He rolled his eyes. "Haven't you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome?"

Blair had just grinned more widely, rubbed his hands, and bounced in place a few more times.

What a surprise. Jim had gotten out of his bunk (king-sized, with blue sheets and a yellow quilt; very comfortable) and gone to the gym. 

Grumpily.

~~~~~~~~

"Elqx*vrxt*ngsgvirhta's a traditionalist." Blair bit into his hot dog with relish and Jim followed suit. It was good. He didn't want to think about what the Things might make hot dogs out of, though; he preferred to pretend that the ship had made a stop at Mr. Tube Steak before leaving the greater Cascade area.

"Okay, I'll bite," he said, even though he really wasn't all that interested in hearing more about Elqx*vrxt— about Elvira. Anything would be better than replaying the "They're still _people_ , Jim" conversation for the hundredth time. "What's she traditional about?"

Blair was mopping up mustard off his shirt. "Huh? Oh — she wants to do things the traditional Earth way. Well, not exactly the traditional way, that would be impossible — and anyway, there are thousands of traditions, not just the mid-twentieth-century WASP tradition — but essentially, she wants to get married. White dress, veil, bridesmaids, the whole wedding deal. You in?"

"W…wh…wha…"

Blair pounded Jim on the back.

Jim coughed and tried again. " _What?_ " Yeah, that had come out better.

"I said, we're getting married. You're up for being my best man, right?… Jim?… Jim?"

~~~~~~~~

The big recreation room was all decked out with greenery and bright weird-looking crap that was probably flowers, and crowded with Things all trying to be on some sort of semi-reverent "wedding behavior". According to Blair, weddings were a new concept for the Things, and they were jostling each other and making little hushed noises. Jim just hoped they weren't making fun of his pants — Charlie had managed to restrain himself somewhat, but had refused to believe that Jim would be happy with just two pants legs.

Jim would've been, though — fuck, _would_ he have been. The third leg dangling from the front of his pants (emptily; Jim had had to placate Charlie by telling him it was "tradition" to just use the two — much longer — legs, listening to Blair snicker helpfully in the background) was embarrassing. He glared at Blair, the backstabbing dickwad, who was standing next to him in front of the podium and completely unembarrassed since he'd done an end run around Jim and bullshitted his way into it being "traditional" for a Sandburg groom to wear a kilt. Charlie hadn't had any problem getting a fucking kilt right.

The music started, and Jim closed his eyes against a sudden…something. It was what people — human people, Jim's people — always played at weddings, and it was playing for Blair's bride, and fuck if he hadn't known from the beginning that Blair writing that goddamned dissertation was going to screw everything up. If he'd just grown a pair and insisted Blair stop writing the goddamned thing, or if Blair'd just gone to Borneo like Jim hadn't wanted him to, none of this would be happening.

An appreciative murmur from the audience brought Jim back from his thoughts. He glanced at Blair, which was probably a mistake — Blair was beaming an entirely too happy smile towards the front of the room and his approaching bride. And his kilt still looked a lot less ridiculous than Jim's pants.

The bridesmaids filed up and stood off to one side of the podium in a line of lumpy, ruffly, weirdly draped pink fabric. Then it was the bride's turn. She'd gone all out with the veil and the lace; she made Jim think of a white cloud drifting down the aisle towards them, and even through the veil Jim could see she looked happy.

Elvira was happy. 

Sandburg was happy. 

Goddammit.

The ship's captain, known to Jim as Yugo, made something resembling a throat-clearing sound and began speaking in Thingese. The ship's translator picked it up a moment later: "Dearly beloved…"

_Goddammit._

~~~~~~~~

The champagne at the reception was passable and so was the music. Sandburg and Elvira had left fairly early, after eating cake and tossing the bouquet and going through a rather nauseating routine involving a garter. Jim had ended up staying longer than he'd intended to.

Which had nothing to do with not wanting to go back to his cabin alone, with not wanting to think about Blair and his new bride. Nothing at all.

Nothing at all to do with not wanting to think about the marshmallows he and Blair had been toasting just before the night sky had turned into a tractor beam, with not wanting to think about what Jim had planned to do as soon as they'd finished those marshmallows.

He'd figured it was going to be easy. He'd made the swap while Blair was upstairs packing the cooler, tossing both Blair's sleeping bag and his own back into the storage unit and substituting the new double sleeping bag he'd hit up REI for the day before. It would've worked like a charm.

After all, Sandburg never could resist opportunity.

Goddammit.

~~~~~~~~

The cabin was dark, just the faint glow of what Blair called the nightlight, and Jim didn't bother to turn the lights up as he stripped off his clothes and tossed them into a corner.

He wanted to go home.

But going home without Sandburg —

Something gentle but insistent curled around his clenched fist and started teasing his fingers open.

He would've whirled and possibly punched someone — some Thing — but a voice said, "Jim," and it was Blair's voice, and it sounded smooth and raw at the same time, sounded hopeful and needy, like…like Blair wanted —

And it was coming from across the cabin, and Blair's arms weren't _that_ long.

"The fuck?" Jim muttered. He didn't pull his hand away from…whatever, though. His fingers had relaxed and a feather-soft touch was tracing patterns in the palm of his hand, and another feather-soft something was starting to curl itself around his ear in a promising manner, and he wasn't an idiot.

Or he was.

His dick was.

"Jim," Blair said again, this time from just behind Jim. "This is okay, right? You and me and Elvira? She's really hot for you, and you have no idea how good at multitasking she is —"

"Oh, I think I can guess." A third feathery touch had found his navel and was beginning to ease itself underneath the waistband of his shorts, and if he didn't think about it, about what was touching him, just let his extra-sensitive touchy-feely _feel_ , he was going to be completely…

Lost.

"Chief," he said, and it was almost a moan, which he hoped Blair would attribute to Elvira's talents, not to a never-used double sleeping bag and just the two of them, him and Blair; just hands and tongues and —

Tongues. Blair's, licking across Jim's lips, asking for more, and it _was_ Blair's tongue; Jim would know his taste anywhere even though he'd never tasted him before, and Jim wasn't always an idiot. He opened his lips and sucked Blair's tongue into his mouth.

Maybe he wasn't as lost as he'd thought he was.

Or maybe he was even more lost, and just didn't care.

~~~~~~~~

Blair was more or less burrowed into Jim's side when Jim woke up, his face buried in Jim's armpit and his arm flung across Jim's chest.

Jim's other side wasn't lonely either; Elvira was pressed up against it. Or at least part of her was. One of her tentacles was smoothing idly up and down along Jim's thigh, which felt…nice. So did the tentacle slithering hopefully through his short and curlies, clearly heading towards Jim's dick. Jim wished the tentacle luck, but as far as he could tell his clip was empty. 

"You weren't kidding about the multitasking," he muttered to the back of Blair's head, stroking a pattern of his own on Blair's ass with a casual finger. "You forgot to mention the insatiable part, though."

"Mmmph," Blair said into Jim's pit. He lifted his head enough to squint at Jim's face. "Sorry?"

Good question.

"I don't know," Jim answered. "Not about this, anyway." Which was nice and vague. And true, even if part of him still wanted Blair all to himself. Wanted to be camping under the stars, wanted…a lot of things.

Blair's gaze wasn't so bleary anymore. "Okay," he said. Then his mouth was on Jim's and he was saying a lot more than that, somehow, without any words at all. 

Things like "Yes" and "Do they make sleeping bags for three?" and "God, Jim" and "Yes, yes, yes."

A feathery touch brushed tentatively against Jim's side and he shivered. What the hell. "Yes," he thought, a yes of his own, and curled one hand in a gentle embrace around Elvira's questioning tentacle. 

_Yes._ As long as he had Blair. 

With or without tentacles.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Implied tentacle porn. Marriage of J or B to someone other than B or J. Threesome. Complete indifference both to scientific principles and to a viable xenobiology model. Illogic. Poorly constructed alien character names. Etc.


End file.
